English

Challenges and Opportunities for time-delay cosmography with multi-messenger gravitational lensing

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-02-10 v1

Abstract

Strong gravitational lensing of variable sources, such as quasars or supernovae, can be used to constrain cosmological parameters through a technique known as "time-delay cosmography''. Competitive constraints on the Hubble constant have been achieved with electromagnetic observations of lensed quasars and lensed supernovae. Gravitational wave (GW) astronomy may open up a new channel for time-delay cosmography with GW signal replacing the electromagnetic (EM) one. We highlight the similarities of using GW signals to be applied to time-delay cosmography compared to EM signal. We then discuss key differences between GW and EM signals and their resulting advantages and inconveniences from the angle of the current state-of-the-art using quasars and lensed supernovae for time-delay cosmography. We identify the astrometric precision requirement of the images as a key challenge to overcome and highlight the potentially significant impact that near-perfect time-delay measurements of lensed GWs can bring to the table.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.04472,
  title  = {Challenges and Opportunities for time-delay cosmography with multi-messenger gravitational lensing},
  author = {Simon Birrer and Graham P. Smith and Anowar J. Shajib and Dan Ryczanowski and Nikki Arendse},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.04472},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 figures, accepted to be published in Philosophical Transactions A

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:35:26.744Z